PM Netanyahu statement on Iran

Preventing Iran from being able to build nuclear weapons is the preeminent challenge of our generation. Today, Iran is sponsoring worldwide terrorism and an unprecedented conventional arms build-up. Think of what it would do with nuclear weapons.

Copyright: PMO webcast

Following is an excerpt from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s remarks (Sunday, 7 June 2015) to the Jerusalem Post Annual Conference in New York City:

Israel has no better friend in the world than the United States. And the United States has no better friend than Israel. I want to thank President Obama, the Congress and the American people for all they have done for Israel’s security.

But even the closest of friends can respectfully disagree about issues of international security. And of these, none is more important to Israel, to the stability of the Middle East and to the peace of the world, than the threat posed by Iran’s nuclear program.

Preventing Iran from being able to build nuclear weapons is the preeminent challenge of our generation. We must understand that Iran doesn’t just threaten the destruction of Israel; it is conquering huge swaths of the Middle East as it seeks to export its Islamic revolution across the globe.

Today, Iran’s campaign of aggression engulfs the entire Middle East: Yemen, Iraq, Lebanon, Gaza, Syria, Libya, elsewhere. Today, Iran is sponsoring worldwide terrorism in the Middle East, in Asia, in Africa, in Europe, in North and South America.Today, Iran is conducting an unprecedented conventional arms build-up:drones, rockets, satellites, submarines, precision guided missiles and other lethal weapons.And in recent months Iran has supplied increasingly sophisticated weapons to its terrorist proxies: to Hezbollah, to Hamas, to Islamic Jihad, the Houthis in Yemen and others. Today, Iran conducts cyber-attacks against Israel, its Arab neighbors and the West.

Iran is doing all this today without nuclear weapons.Think of what Iran would do tomorrow with nuclear weapons.

Now, unfortunately the Lausanne framework paves Iran’s way to produce the enriched uranium for an entire arsenal of nuclear weapons. That’s the inevitable outcome if Iran keeps the deal. If they decide to break the deal, they can get to the bomb much sooner. The deal also gives Iran tens of billions of dollars immediately, and hundreds of billions of dollars in the coming years.

That’s big money – big money to support Iran’s global terrorism, big money to fund Iran’s aggression in the region, big money for Iran’s massive conventional arms build-up. It would be a historic mistake to rush now to conclude this bad deal.

What are needed are patience and resolve, to hold out for a better deal, one that will actually block Iran’s path to the bomb, one that will tie the lifting of restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program to changes in Iranian behavior.